1. Technical Field
This application relates to growing plants hydroponically. More particularly, it relates to a growing chamber for growing plants.
2. Description of Related Art
There is a premium placed on the predictable production of food. This is due in part to our requirement for food to live, and also due to the increased desirability of fresh food and our rather stable need for calories.
One way to improve predictably of plants grown for consumption is to use a greenhouse because greenhouses offer improved climate control over open air farms. Greenhouses benefit from solar heat through convection, and thus are built to be transparent to let light in.
Another technique to improve plant yields is growing plants hydroponically. While plants naturally grow in soil, the soil only serves as a reservoir of nutrients. Thus, one can dissolve the nutrients in water and provide the fortified water to the plants. Hydroponics allow a user to provide very precise amounts and ratios of nutrients to plants.
Greenhouses and hydroponics are complementary technologies, and they scale well. An installation named Thanet Earth in England offers over 200 acres of hydroponically grown crops.
However, more than 40% of the land in United States is still used for farming Presently, it would be exceptionally difficult and expensive to convert this quantity of farmland to hydroponic greenhouses.
One inventive insight disclosed herein was that instead of trying to build ever larger greenhouses, to instead design and build modular growing chambers that can be used to replace small sections of a farm. If a farmer wishes to expand their production, they can buy or lease another growing chamber. To be practical, it's important that a farmer can simply have the growing chamber delivered as a turnkey solution—which led to the insight that a chamber should be designed to operate from sources already existing on farms, such as a 120 Volt power supply.